The Dispensable Nation: American Foreign Policy in Retreat (43 page)

  
1.
“Vice President Biden: Iraq Could Be One of the Great Achievements of This Administration,” ABC News, February 11, 2011,
http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2010/02/vice-president-biden-iraq-could-be-one-of-the-great-achievements-of-this-administration/
.

  
2.
Kenneth Pollock, “Maliki Dilemma,”
National Interest
, February 1, 2012,
http://nationalinterest.org/commentary/the-maliki-dilemma-6418
.

  
3.
Toby Dodge, “The Resistible Rise of Nuri Al-Maliki,”
Opendemocracy
, March 22, 2012,
http://www.opendemocracy.net/toby-dodge/resistible-rise-of-nuri-al-maliki
.

  
4.
Liz Sly, “U.S. Policy on Iraq Questioned as Influence Wanes, Maliki Consolidates Power,”
Washington Post
, April 8, 2012,
http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/us-policy-on-iraq-questioned-as-influence-wanes/2012/04/08/gIQAHEAU4S_story.html?hpid=z1
.

  
5.
Joseph R. Biden and Leslie H. Gelb, “Unity Through Autonomy in Iraq,”
New York Times
, May 1, 2006,
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/01/opinion/01biden.html?pagewanted=all
.

  
6.
Joseph R. Biden, “A Plan to Hold Iraq Together,”
Washington Post
, August 24, 2006,
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/08/23/AR2006082301419.html
; “Biden Vows to Fight Troop Surge in Iraq,” CBS News, February 11, 2009,
http://www.cbsnews.com/2100-250_162-2299237.html
.

  
7.
Michael R. Gordon and Bernard E. Trainor,
The Endgame: The Inside Story of the Struggle for Iraq, from George W. Bush to Barack Obama
(New York: Pantheon, 2012), pp. 628–50.

  
8.
Michael R. Gordon, “Failed Efforts and Challenges of America’s Last Months in Iraq,”
New York Times
, September 23, 2012, p. A1.

  
9.
Martin S. Indyk, Kenneth G. Lieberthal, and Michael E. O’Hanlon,
Bending History: Barack Obama’s Foreign Policy
(Washington, DC: Brookings Institution, 2012).

10.
Gordon and Trainor,
Endgame
, p. 657.

11.
Sly, “U.S. Policy on Iraq Questioned.”

12.
Serena Chaudhry, “Feeling Marginalized, Some Iraq Sunnis Eye Autonomy,”
Reuters
, January 1, 2012,
http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/01/01/us-iraq-politics-sunnis-idUSTRE80005620120101
.

13.
“Kurdish Leader Accuses Iraqi PM of Leading Country to ‘Dictator-ship,’ ”
Al-Arabiya News
, March 21, 2012,
http://english.alarabiya.net/articles/2012/03/21/202063.html
.

14.
Salah Nasrawi, “2011: Why Did Iraq Miss the Arab Spring?”
Ahram Online
, December 31, 2011,
http://english.ahram.org.eg/NewsContent/2/8/30638/World/Region/-Why-did-Iraq-miss-the-Arab-Spring.aspx
.

15.
Vali Nasr,
The Shia Revival: How Conflicts Within Islam Will Shape the Future
(New York: Norton, 2006).

16.
Vali Nasr, “When Shiites Rise,”
Foreign Affairs
, July/August 2006,
http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/61733/vali-nasr/when-the-shiites-rise
.

17.
David Laitin,
Hegemony and Culture: Politics and Religious Change Among the Yoruba
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986).

18.
There is rich scholarship explaining the absence of communal violence when states can make a case for minority rule making rebellion difficult. Donald Horowitz,
Ethnic Groups in Conflict
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987); Roger Peterson,
Understanding Ethnic Violence
(New York: Cambridge University Press, 2002); Stuart Kaufman,
Modern Hatreds: The Symbolic Politics of Ethnic War
(Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2001).

19.
Vali Nasr, “Regional Implications of Shi’a Revival in Iraq,”
Washington Quarterly
27, no. 3 (Summer 2004): 7–24.

20.
Vali Nasr, “Syria After the Fall,”
New York Times
, July 29, 2012, p. SR4; Fouad Ajami,
The Syrian Rebellion
(Stanford, CA: Hoover Institution Press, 2012), pp. 111–34.

21.
On the importance of these civic ties see Ashutosh Varshney,
Ethnic Conflict and Civic Life: Hindus and Muslims in India
(New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2002).

22.
On how political interest could entrench the politics of identity and turn it violent see Paul R. Brass,
The Production of Hindu-Muslim Violence in Contemporary India
(Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2011).

23.
Steven Wilkinson,
Votes and Violence: Electoral Competition and Ethnic Riots in India
(New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004).

24.
Benjamin Miller,
States, Nations, and Great Powers: The Sources of Regional War and Peace
(New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007).

25.
Niall Ferguson,
The War of the World
(New York: Penguin, 2006), pp. 28–30, 255.

26.
Vali Nasr, “If the Arab Spring Turns Ugly,”
New York Times
, August 27, 2011,
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/28/opinion/sunday/the-dangers-lurking-in-the-arab-spring.html?pagewanted=all
.

27.
Ayad Allawi, “How the U.S. and the World Can Help Iraq,”
Washington Post
, August 31, 2011,
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/how-the-us-and-the-world-can-help-iraq/20U/08/30/gIQAIPZxsJ_story.html

  
1.
Fawaz Gerges,
Obama and the Middle East: The End of America’s Moment?
(New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012).

  
2.
Martin S. Indyk, Kenneth G. Lieberthal, and Michael E. O’Hanlon,
Bending History: Barack Obama’s Foreign Policy
(Washington, DC: Brookings Institution, 2012), p. 112.

  
3.
Ibid., p. 121.

  
4.
Ibid., p. 122.

  
5.
Ibid.

  
6.
Dan Ephron, “The Wrath of Mahmoud Abbas,”
Daily Beast
, April 24, 2011,
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2011/04/25/mahmoud-abbas-interview-palestinian-leaders-frustration-with-obama.html
.

  
7.
Jim Lobe, “US Standing Plunges Across the Arab World,”
Al-Jazeera
, July 14, 2011,
http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2011/07/2011714104413787827.html
.

  
8.
“President Barack Obama’s Inaugural Address,”
White House Blog
,
http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/inaugural-address
.

  
9.
“Obama Pledges Support for Tunisia,”
Al-Arabiya
, October 8, 2011,
http://english.alarabiya.net/articles/2011/10/08/170747.html
.

10.
Indyk, Lieberthal, and O’Hanlon,
Bending History
, pp. 146–48. Also see the president’s comments, “Remarks by the President on the Situation in Egypt,”
http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2011/02/01/remarks-president-situation-egypt
.

11.
“Clinton Calls for ‘Peaceful, Orderly Transition’ in Egypt,”
McClatchy
, January 30, 2012,
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2011/01/30/107726/clinton-calls-for-peaceful-orderly.html
.

12.
Steven Cook,
The Struggle for Egypt: From Nasser to Tahrir Square
(New York: Oxford University Press, 2011), pp. 272–307.

13.
James Mann,
The Obamians: The Struggle Inside the White House to Define American Power
(New York: Viking, 2012).

14.
Ibid., p. 279.

15.
Helene Cooper, Mark Landler, and David E. Sanger, “In U.S. Signals to Egypt, Obama Straddled a Rift,”
New York Times
, February 12, 2011,
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/13/world/middleeast/13diplomacy.html?pagewanted=all
.

16.
Robin Wright,
Rock the Casbah: Rage and Rebellion Across the Islamic World
(New York: Simon & Schuster, 2012); Marc Lynch,
The Arab Uprising: The Unfinished Revolutions of the New Middle East
(New York: Public Affairs, 2012), pp. 43–66.

17.
Alaa Al Aswany,
On the State of Egypt: What Made the Revolution Inevitable
(New York: Vintage, 2011); Tarek Osman,
Egypt on the Brink
(New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2011).

18.
Alexis de Tocqueville,
The Old Regime and the French Revolution
(New York: Anchor, 1955), p. 177.

19.
The Muslim Brotherhood had a plurality win of 38 percent of the vote and 235 of 498 seats in the 508-member assembly (a token ten seats were filled by appointment). The Salafist al-Nour party, Islamists like the Brotherhood only more so, won 28 percent and 123 seats.

20.
Martin Indyk, Kenneth G. Lieberthal, and Michael O’Hanlon, “Scoring Obama’s Foreign Policy,”
Foreign Affairs
, May/June 2012, p. 38.

21.
Tony Smith,
America’s Mission: The United States and the Worldwide Struggle for Democracy in the Twentieth Century
(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1994).

22.
Mary Elise Sarotte,
1989: The Struggle to Create Post–Cold War Europe
(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2011).

23.
Lynch,
Arab Uprising
.

24.
Vali Nasr, “Economics Versus Extremism,”
Newsweek International
, November 2, 2009, pp. 56–58.

25.
Steven Cook, “On the Economy, Egypt’s New Leaders Should Follow Mubarak,”
Bloomberg View
, May 26, 2011,
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-05-26/on-the-economy-egypt-s-new-leaders-should-follow-mubarak.html
.

26.
Ari Paul, “Egypt’s Labor Pains: For Workers the Revolution Has Just Begun,”
Dissent
, Fall 2011,
http://www.dissentmagazine.org/article/?article=4048
.

27.
Sinan Ülgen, “Supporting Arab Economies in Transition,”
International Economic Bulletin
, July 5, 2012,
http://carnegieendowment.org/2012/07/05/supporting-arab-economies-intransition/ck6p
.

28.
“Unfinished Business,”
Economist
, February 4, 2012, p. 49.

29.
Ülgen, “Supporting Arab Economies in Transition.”

30.
Ibrahim Saif,
Challenges of Egypt’s Economic Transition
(Washington, DC: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 2011), p. 4, available at
http://carnegieendowment.org/files/egypt_econ_transition.pdf
.

31.
Hafez Ghanem, “Two Economic Priorities for Post-Election Egypt: Macro-Stabilization and Corruption Control,” Brookings Institution,
June 25, 2012,
http://www.brookings.edu/research/opinions/2012/06/25-post-election-egypt-ghanem
.

32.
Ibid.

33.
Carrie Rosefsky Wickham,
Mobilizing Islam: Religion, Activism, and Political Change in Egypt
(New York: Columbia University Press, 2002).

34.
Jean-Paul Carvalho,
A Theory of the Islamic Revival
, Department of Economics, University of Oxford, March 2009, p. 39,
http://www.economics.ox.ac.uk/Research/wp/pdf/paper424.pdf
.

35.
Nathan J. Brown,
When Victory Becomes an Option: Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood Confronts Success
(Washington, DC: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 2012), available at
http://carnegieendowment.org/files/brotherhood_success.pdf
.

36.
Zeinab Abul-Magd, “The Egyptian Republic of Retired Generals,”
Foreign Policy
, May 8, 2012,
http://mideast.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2012/05/08/the_egyptian_republic_of_retired_generals
.

37.
David Sanger,
Confront and Conceal: Obama’s Secret Wars and Surprising Use of American Power
(New York: Crown, 2012), pp. 314–15.

38.
“The Other Arab Spring,”
Economist
, August 11, 2012,
http://www.economist.com/node/21560243?fsrc=scn/tw_ec/the_other_arab_spring
; Vali Nasr,
Forces of Fortune: The Rise of the New Muslim Middle Class and What It Will Mean for Our World
(New York: Free Press, 2009); Christopher M. Schroeder, “The Middle East Could Be a Cradle of Innovation,”
Harvard Business Review
, October 12, 2012;
http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2012/10/the_middle_east_could_be_a_cra.html
; Wright,
Rock the Casbah
.

39.
Michael Mandelbaum,
Democracy’s Good Name: The Rise and Risks of the World’s Most Popular Form of Government
(New York: Public Affairs, 2007), pp. 91–92.

40.
“Hillary Clinton Deserves Credit for U.S. Role in Libya: View,”
Bloomberg View
, September 7, 2011,
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-09-08/hillary-clinton-deserves-credit-for-the-positive-u-s-role-in-libya-view.html
.

41.
Mann,
The Obamians
, p. 279.

42.
William Arkin and Dana Priest,
Top Secret America: The Rise of the New American Security State
(Boston: Little, Brown, 2011).

43.
Sanger,
Confront and Conceal
, pp. 243–72.

44.
Peter Bergen, “Warrior in Chief,”
New York Times
, April 29, 2012, p. SR1.

45.
David Rodhe, “The Obama Doctrine,”
Foreign Policy
, March/April 2012, pp. 65–69.

46.
Greg Miller, “U.S. Set to Keep Kill Lists for Years,”
Washington Post
, October 24, 2012, p. A1.

47.
Michael O’Hanlon thinks that the administration has lacked an effective strategy for dealing with failing states: “Obama’s Weak and Failing States Agenda,”
Washington Quarterly
35, no. 4 (Fall 2012): 67–80.